During the first six months of this year, the SBCI delivered a total of €311m in state-supported loans to small businesses through traditional banks. Some €118m of these funds, or 38%, were part of the €150m Agriculture Cashflow Support Loan Scheme, introduced in January by the Department of Agriculture.

These are the loans offered at the subsidised rate of 2.95%, thanks to emergency European funding made available during the past two years’ commodity price crisis.

While agriculture previously accounted for 22% of SBCI lending, this jumped to over a third once the new agri-loans scheme was in place.

Figures previously released by the Department of Agriculture, showed that dairy and beef farmers claimed the lion’s share of the loans, with the south-west leading draw-downs.

There are now calls to continue and increase the availability of such state-supported loans for farmers in the next budget.

“There remains an ongoing market failure within the Irish banking system, with a lack of competition and a legacy of historical banking losses,” said IFA farm business chairman, Martin Stapleton. “We have proposed that this October’s budget should support new loan products for farming through the SBCI, to fund both ongoing working capital requirements and for on-farm investment.”

Exclusive: money still available under low-cost loan scheme

Cheap agri-loans account for 38% of SBCI finance in first half of 2017

The mid-year report published this Friday by the Government-backed Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI), shows a sharp rise in the share of state-supported loans made to farmers.